An open letter to ESPN The Magazine

This is the actual e-mail that I sent to ESPN The Magazine in regards to my subscription to their publication.

Fr: andy@desipio.com
To: ms_support@espn.go.com

Re: My ESPN The Magazine Subscription

Dear ESPN The Magazine Overlord,

I am currently a subscriber to your magazine, even though I never actually subscribed to your magazine. I pay the monthly fee to be an ESPN Insider, mainly so I can read Buster Olney’s baseball blog, and to check and see just how irrelevant Peter Gammons’ columns continue to become.

As a “benefit” you send me issues of your bi-monthly magazine. However, it’s obvious that you use a rather optimistic definition of the word “benefit.”

I am requesting that you stop sending me the magazine. It was brought to my attention by my wife that when the magazine comes to our house it never leaves the kitchen. It just kind of sits there, waiting to be thrown away…unopened.

I currently subscribe to two magazines, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly which I actually read, though I will admit that if a 300 pound Best Buy checker hadn’t offered me the opportunity to get free issues of both magazines, and if she hadn’t looked as though she was going to bludgeon me to death with the price scanner, I probably wouldn’t subscribe to either of them.

However, there’s a big distinction between those magazines and yours. I actually like them. I take them to my reading room where they sit in a basket right next to my special reading chair, or throne if you will, or toilet if you want to be specific.

As I defecate, I read well-written tales of athletes and sporting events, and movies and TV shows. I enjoy it.

As for your magazine? I don’t even like it enough to read it while I’m crapping.

I’m not asking for you to cancel my Insider subscription to your Web site, though really, it’s a complete ripoff. Though if Buster doesn’t stop wearing his Brewers knee pads pretty soon, I might have to rethink that.

Buster, they’re not going to pass the Cubs during the regular season, and they’re not going to beat them in the playoffs. The sooner you come to terms with that (and the sooner you come to terms with the fact that no grown man should be called Buster) we’ll both be better off.

No, I still want the Insider subscription. I just don’t want your strangely sized, poorly written, overly designed magazine. I mean, really, have you ever taken a good look at it? It sucks.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

1. First off, your magazine is a weird size. It’s not magazine size. I know you think it’s an edgy size, because everything you do is edgy, but really, it’s just annoying. One thing it is good for, though? If a fly gets in your house you can really go to town whacking at it with that thing. Maybe that would be a good secondary market for it? To exterminators?

2. What’s with the paper? It’s chintzy 70 pound text weight. At least real magazines use gloss on their cover.

3. What’s with all of the shirtless athletes? It’s like you can’t decide if you want to be a sports magazine, or a men’s magazine, or a gay men’s magazine.

This is kind of creepy…

But this is just plain gay.

Honestly, that Carl Edwards cover didn’t even make it to the house. I just tore the address label off of it and set it on fire right at the mailbox then threw it into traffic. Holy crap. What were you thinking?

Your audience is not women. What man is going to see that at a bookstore or grocery store and actually carry it up to the checkout? You might as well have given out a free “I LIKE DUDES” t-shirt with this one.

4. The design of your magazine is not cutting edge, unless the goal is to make your readers want to cut themselves with the edge of a razor blade. You can’t just throw nine fonts on a page and call it design. Also, find a few colors that work and stick to those. If my dog ate a box of Crayolas and threw up on the floor she’d be more consistent than the room full of monkeys you have working on this thing.

5. Your writers are either not good at all, or ill-suited to the format.

Like Bill Simmons, he’s at his best when he’s writing long-form. His magazine columns always suck. I mean they’re not bad they’re horrendous. He made a big deal out of how you gave him more room last year and you know what? He just sucks for two pages instead of one.

Stephen A. Smith is also bad. I have no idea what he was writing about in your last issue. It was either about Kobe isn’t MJ (really?) or how Kobe should have punched one of his teammates, or how Kobe’s not Muhammad Ali. I’m not even exaggerating, I have no idea what he was writing about.

Then, we get to Stu Scott’s steaming pile of feces where you used to pretend he traded text messages with people, and now you pretend he’s chatting online with people.

Stu’s an assclown on the air, and he’s even less suited for print. It’s gibberish. I mean, literal gibberish. Whoever his editor is should be beaten with a rolled up collection of these horrendously bad “columns.”

6. You call it “Page 2” I suppose to try to tie it in with the lamest part of your Web site, but it’s really just pages 26-41. Or really, short features that aren’t good enough to be full features and frankly, that we should have just left out of the magazine altogether.

You’ve got your mailbag in there which is impossible to screw up, and yet, you try your damndest.

Then, do Mike and Mike really need a freaking page in your magazine? Is the world not tired of their “he’s fat and he’s a sissy” schtick? Oh, and they always discuss such pertinent things. In this last week’s issue we learned that Golic doesn’t think Batman’s a real superhero, that Tiger apparently won a tournament with a bad knee and they wrote about the Tour de France. The Tour de France? Tremendous.

Way to know your audience, again.

Oh, and come on, are you still doing that “Right Name, Wrong Number” thing? It was lame 10 years ago and you’ve done it twice a month since then. “Hey, let’s see if there’s somebody else named Aaron Rogers and we’ll call him and pretend that we think it’s the guy from the Packers! It’ll be a hoot!”

It’s not a hoot. So, not a hoot. Nobody is hooting. Stop it.

7. Your features are always late, lame or both. For instance in this last issue little Busty spends five days with Brandon Webb of the Diamondbacks…starting May 15. For the July 14 issue. Holy crap, how is he filing his articles…by carrier pigeon? Yeah, the D’backs were good in May, they’ve been terrible since. How about a feature on what happened? Nah, it’s about how Brandon flies toy helicopters at Bank One Ballpark. That is outstanding. I love it. So much better than actual information. Thanks.

You did a feature on a Spanish basketball player named Ricky Rubio. That’s great. I’m sure all two Spanish basketball fans are thrilled.

Then, several pages on NASCAR memorabilia auctions, which was basically just your way of pointing out that you think “Dumbass hicks will buy anything with a NASCAR logo on it!” I’m not saying you’re not right, but come on…really?

Thanks for the two page spread on the World Series of Poker, an event that about nine people cared about when you were trying to force us to think it was important (just like you try with the NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament every year.)

Easily the most pointless article of the issue was the feature on Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns trying to get on a TV show. I thought that by the end of the article that he’d have secured a bit part on a TV show which is why you were doing the feature.

But no. He’s not. He just wants to.

Great. I’d like to meet Jessica Biel. Why don’t you spend four pages on that and have it end with me not meeting her?

Then we get some pap about Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez and how he’s going to turn around the football program because it’s been so lousy for the 30 years, oh and he likes to swear, and lie to his players.

Hey, here’s an actually interesting idea for a story, about James Felton, a dope who declared for the NBA draft a dozen years ago out of high school and nobody ever heard from him again. It was a good idea, not so well executed, but not terrible. In this magazine, it’s the gold standard.

I’m so glad you were able to find 20 pages to devote to the ESPYs. I think it’s so cute how you think people actually care about that show, and how you pretend people watch it.

Then we get a story about cycling, because the kids love cycling. Once again, you prove you have no idea who your audience is, and even if you did, you’d have no idea how to reach them.

Then, the notes pages, this issue it’s the NBA, the NFL, college basketball, soccer and motorsports. These aren’t bad, but honestly, they ought to just be on the Web site, because by the time you publish the magazine, they’re all old news.

You have Kenny Mayne still doing the old Dan Patrick interview thing, which isn’t terrible, but would it kill you to have a new idea, even once?

The 0:01 where you fake a photo and it’s supposed to be funny…never is.

And we finish with Rick Reilly. Just about the time he started to phone it in at SI, you brought him over to work for you. That’s just so perfect.

So, to sum up, your magazine sucks, and even though I’m not directly paying for it, I don’t want it sent to my house. It’s just one more thing I have to throw away without opening every month. You know, like my bills.

Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Andy

42 Comments

Cubman in Satanic Fowl Land
on July 15, 2008 at 12:27 pm

Andy, you should recycle…I know it’s trash, but still, do your part.

And it is a funny size…trying to copy Rolling Stone.

Pre
on July 15, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Good luck with that. They started sending me this with my mlb.com radio subscription and despite the fact I canceled it and begged them to stop they continue to send it to me.

A couple years ago I signed up for insider and got the magazine for at least a year past when I canceled insider.

All-star game Gamecast
on July 15, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Will there be one of me tonight?

Hip-Hop Stuart Scott
on July 15, 2008 at 3:00 pm

Yo, bitch. My writing be phat. Keep it realer than a mofo and shit. Bitch.

Catch me on Ebonicenter.

ESPN
on July 15, 2008 at 3:02 pm

Dearest Andrew,

Perhaps some clarification is in order. Please allow us to explain our actions…

Our mission statement here at ESPN, is to strive to meet and exceed the expectations of drooling, half-wit, high school dropouts with really nice tooth, (you may commonly refer to them as ‘teeth’). Secretly, they are referred to as “Cardinal Fans” around our headquarters, but, because of legal issues and other ‘political correctness’ that those liberal, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, Nancy-boy, douchebags in Washington (don’t get us started) hold us accountable for, our marketing department refers to them as our “target audience.”

Frankly Andy, you nor any of your faithful readers would ever be considered our target audience. Why you ask? Because you are Cubs fans. You have endured 99. 826 years of futility, mediocrity, heartbreak, Ron Santo as your radio color-commentator, and players that wear half-shirts. (Yes. We know you are hiding Lassie in that clubhouse of yours). So, we digress. By default, that makes you and your faithful Desipio.com readers (we’ve been watching you..we are ALWAYS watching you) gritty, hardened, soldiers in arms. Or, at the very least, candidates for frontal lobotomy surgery. We want no part of that here, and would just prefer you smart-folk peruse other periodicals such as ‘Popular Mechanics’, ‘The Wall Street Journal’, ‘The American Dental Association Monthly’ and other intellectually stimulating material by the likes of ‘Juggs’. You aren’t wanted, nor needed to substantiate ESPN paying rogue editors like us to reply to your mindless, incoherent, yet surprisingly amusing wafflings.

Why the hell do you think we let Stuart Scott have his own column? It isn’t to reach out to intelligent, tax paying, hard(ly) working individuals like you fine Desipio bloggers. No-no. On the contrary… Who do you think buys our garbage, err, we mean magazines, so we can sit here in our starchy white shirts, double pleated slacks, and waft in our own self-importance? That’s right those fine, upstanding citizens south of the Mason-Dixon line. Again, our “target audience.” But now that we can consider ourselves Email acquaintances, let’s not mince words here and just call them what they are… barn-yard animal lovers (you get our drift). Although, they like to covertly refer to themselves as bird watching enthusiasts. Hence, “Cardinal fans.”

Our sincerest of apologies to you Andrew. We did not mean to offend your intelligence in any way, shape or form. You obviously have been put on our mailing list as a joke by one of your fellow co-workers or bloggers. Sort of like when Peter Gammons secretly sends Lassie subscriptions of ‘Backdoor Bangers’, ‘Young Studs’ and ‘Flaming Fastballs” to the Cubs’ locker room, care of Tony LaRussa.

True story. I worked for a shipping/moving company in high school and college, and one of the magazines they shipped was ESPN The Magazine. We had to fly to Stillwater, OK to box it, put it on skids, and load it on the trucks. We didn’t even read that nonsense on our breaks, because we figured there were better things to do. In Stillwater. During tornado season.

Resident of the South
on July 15, 2008 at 4:12 pm

Dear ESPN,

You suck. Don’t lump all of us in with Cardinal fans.

Sincerely,

You really do suck.

B.O.B.
on July 15, 2008 at 4:30 pm

Ummm…..I’m pretty sure the D-Bags don’t play in the B.O.B. anymore. It is called Chase Field. They got rid of the B.O.B. when they got rid of Brenly and decided they wanted nothing to do with another Bob ever. Not even a kneel and bob.

Don’t you hate when they change the name of something and then retroactively change historical notations about it to the new name? It drives me nuts. Supposedly the D-Bags won the World Series in Chase Field even though it did not exist in 2001. And all the past NASCAR champions supposedly won Nextel Cups even though the Smoking Industry was handing out ashtrays for most of my youth for the rednecks turning left.

Missouri Compromise
on July 15, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Dear Resident of the South, (or ya’ll if that suits you)
I think this is what originally lumped you in with all the Tards. Being from a southern, by way of wanting to keep black people down, state the Cardinals get to share in with all the hatred of the much more enlightened North where black people were free albeit held down by socio-economic injustice. This socio-economic disparity led directly to the creation of a South Side Baseball team known as the Pale Hoes named because they employ a large number of white bitches.

ESPN
on July 15, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Dearest ‘Resident of the South’,

What we meant to say was “those fine upstanding citizens that are located at, 36Â° N to 40Â°â€Š37â€² N Latitude/ 89Â°â€Š6â€² W to 95Â°â€Š46â€² W Longitude.” (Aka, Missouri)

That one slipped by our editing department. Please accept a free lifetime subscription to ‘ESPN The Magazine’ with our deepest regrets.

Sincerely,

ESPN

Piling on
on July 15, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Andy, thanks for calling out Reilly. Yeah, he’s sucked for some time. I never heard his voice until the 30 seconds I tuned in for the HR Derby last night.

Aside from making some asinine comments that implied MLB was racist for having eight white guys compete (dumb ass, guys can and have turned it down, including A-Rod), his insufferable New England accent was turned up six notches because he was in the Bronx.

Couple that with the decaying corpse of Chris Berman’s schtick and a uber-edited version of Mystic River seemed much more appealing.

Gay Rod
on July 15, 2008 at 6:19 pm

Andy,

I LOVE ESPN Mag! Can I come over and see your reading room, it sounds really cool?

So making fun of an incompetent douche for talking at a third-grade level is racist.

I’ll bet you a billion dollars you never served in the military. Hippie knee-jerk white apologists like you are too stupid to live. Bitch.

World B Free
on July 16, 2008 at 10:48 am

One of the happiest days of the past year was when ESPN the magazine stopped arriving in my mail. With the rise in quality sports blogs out there, the death rattle of the weekly sports mag has to be nearly complete. I think the last issue of Sports Illustrated I read was about 10 years ago.

Peter Gammons
on July 16, 2008 at 12:38 pm

I really must object to this blatant character assassination. I am still relevant.

Um, uh …

Anyway, I know my stuff. For instance, I know the contending teams like the Red Sox are looking to make trades. The Red Sox need a hitter. I’m in tune with the Red Sox.

As the trade deadline approaches, I can speculate with the best of them. Hey, someone might get the Giants to part with Tim Lincecum!

Red Sox. Did I mention the Red Sox? I know that team well.

Uh, um, ……………………………………………………………………..

Is John Hart still around? Now he was a deal maker! He would have been perfect with the Red Sox!

Anyway, I have many important calls to make. But just look at who’s in first place in the American League’s Eastern Division: the Boston Red Sox.

…………………………..adwtewre……………………………………………………………………….

Vineline
on July 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm

I’m the exact same size and use the exact same stock as ESPN the Mag. However, I have CBL writing for me, so there’s always that.

David
on July 16, 2008 at 1:29 pm

That is spot on about ESPN the magazine. When it first came out, they had a trial for three months. After that they sent me a bill for a subscription but I never paid it. They continued to send me the magazine for a a year.

A couple years later I subscribe to ESPN Insider and after realizing it was a joke, I canceled it. Later that month, I am greeted by their crappy magazine in my mailbox. It was like being visited by that relative you hate so much. This time it took them more than a year to finally stop sending me this crap.

I’m afraid that if I visit their website, they’ll send me more magazines.

Digital Camera
on July 16, 2008 at 1:42 pm

One glorius day sometime last year (or maybe it was two years ago), ESPN the Magazine simply stopped coming in the mail. I had gotten it for free with Insider. Maybe it was because I moved. Twice. They can’t find me anymore! Either way, I get SI, and that’s it. I guess what I’m saying is move, twice. Then you’ll never have to deal with them again.

Sucks Ass
on July 16, 2008 at 2:31 pm

Vineline does me.

Bob Melvin
on July 17, 2008 at 12:42 am

Dear B.O.B.,

They got rid of Brenly and replaced him with me. Kneel and bob.. funny stuff!

Keith Olberman
on July 17, 2008 at 1:06 am

While I completely agree with your assessment, it seems you spent a fair amount of time reading a magazine you claim gets thrown away without ever opening it. How does that work?

vodkadog
on July 17, 2008 at 7:10 am

i tried to subscribe to be insider for the same reasons you did….i was told i had to pay ‘extra’ to cover added shipping costs of the magazine to canada…since i didn’t want the magazone in the first place (there seems to be no choice), i passed..

TDubbs
on July 17, 2008 at 8:01 am

Carl Edwards is jacked

Andy
on July 17, 2008 at 8:23 am

Keith,
I suffered for this piece. I had to read through it to mock it. Never again.

Oh, I did get an e-mail back from them yesterday. You’re going to love it.

Cris E
on July 17, 2008 at 8:51 am

Here’s your plan: fill out a change of address form and send it in.

It gets you two things: no magazine in your house, and it gets you out of their mailing database so you’re not sold to “partner organizations” for the next ten years. You should be able to manage your Insider account electronically, so that’ll stay intact, but the paper stuff floats away.

Feel free to embellish with creative choices for the new address.

Nice Tease!
on July 17, 2008 at 9:26 am

So where’s their reply, Andy?

kevin warren
on July 17, 2008 at 10:15 am

has any one pointed out to espn that jim valvano is dead, and that only one of the places he coached did not wind up on ncaa probation?

This is funnier than anything Bill Simmons has written in ages! The pigeon thing had be rolling! Great stuff….

JimH5
on July 18, 2008 at 8:21 am

Lay off Gammons. He’s a legend, and there’s nothing funny about ripping a guy who has come back from a brain aneurysm.

Uncool.

Peter Gammons
on July 18, 2008 at 11:51 am

Thank you. I am very cool. I even have my glasses tinted with the colors of that team for the ages: the Boston Red Sox. Have I mentioned their two titles in four years? Only the Yankees, A’s, Reds and Blue Jays have done better than Boston in such a short span of time.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm …………………………………

Adam
on July 18, 2008 at 6:31 pm

I asked not to receive the Mag when I signed up to be an Insider. They donated my subscription to an aircraft carrier stationed in Iraq. If it makes the boys over there happy, then that’s good enough for me. As much as the four-letter gets on my nerves, they can be reasonable sometimes if you give them a chance. Not that this wasn’t a great read…just sayin’.

Ed
on July 18, 2008 at 9:05 pm

I was referred to your site via a link on The Big Lead. I just wanted to tell you that this letter was bang on, and that you now have a permanent place among my bookmarks. Congratulations.

Joe
on July 18, 2008 at 10:19 pm

Right, so ESPN’s target audience is Cardinals fans–that explains why there’s never any coverage of teams from the East Coast. Great point!

John the Man
on July 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm

I signed up for the Mag just to get the Insider thing, too…. but from what I read you have to give up your cc number to get that ‘free’ Insider thing, which is just SUCH bullshit.

Cost me like $2/yr for two years of Mag and Insider via a link from SlickDeals.net. So it’s not like I’m out a ton of money. I’m going to do the whole change of address thing, that should fix it for me.

Steve1
on July 19, 2008 at 11:17 am

Just out of curiosity, if you were going to read a sports magazine what would be in it? By my glance, they don’t try to do news. Which is good. And they tell good stories and have cool pictures. Seems like a little ESPN hating on the magazine when the magazine is the most tolerable thing that ESPN does.

I got the July 28th edition yesterday and I honestly could not determine if I was looking at a guy or a girl on the cover for the first few moments. Turns out to be Ryan Sheckler–the “Skate Champ/Reality Star/Mogul-in-the-Making Ryan Sheckler.”

Ahh. Just who I want to cover my sports magazine…

Ugh.

wildjays
on July 21, 2008 at 1:05 pm

I actually got a call from this agency a few weeks ago that wanted to check with me to see if my ESPN magazine was arriving in good condition without rips and if I was enjoying it. I had to point out to the caller that I had not subscribed to the magazine for over a year so I had not received any copies to give feedback on. The caller then looked up the information and realized that I hadn’t been a subscriber for over a year. Funny stuff.

B-Mac
on July 21, 2008 at 8:17 pm

I don’t know what’s lazier, Stu Scotts eye, or Steve A Smiths attempt at being a legit sports writer/sports commentator. If they counted idiocy in poundage he would be more obese than Mike Golic.